At this time of the college basketball season, you will see a plethora of "Who's In/Who's Out" segments on the ESPN networks, CBS, and probably any other major outlet that shows college hoops. Without fail, those segments will show three things about a bubble team or team that the experts are trying to seed: the team's overall record, the team's RPI, and the team's record against the RPI Top 50. Strength of schedule and a few quality wins or bad losses may also be shown in those graphics. Yet, any number of those metrics may hold minimal sway with the 10 people on the selection committee.
The fundamental problem with an individual team's RPI is that the formula is three-quarters out of that particular team's control. Just to refresh: the RPI is one-quarter of the team's winning percentage, one-half opponents' winning percentage (i.e., strength of schedule), and one-quarter opponents' opponents' winning percentage. The team's winning percentage component is adjusted to where road wins and home losses equal 1.4 games and road losses and home wins count as 0.6 games.
This season, there looks to be two curious cases where a team's RPI is lesser than the sum of its parts as shown on the court.
As of Sunday, Illinois' RPI lies at 64, traditionally not an ideal place to be with two weeks left until Selection Sunday. However, the Illini have four Top 50 wins, including road wins at Clemson and Wisconsin, two very tough places to play. The other two Top 50 wins are also of substance, home wins against potential top four seeds Michigan State and Vanderbilt. Working against the Illini are losses against middling teams like Georgia, Bradley, and Utah. Illinois' record against the Top 100 now sits at 6-9.
Notre Dame, if you value RPI, would be in even worse position that Illinois at the moment, as they lie at number 72. After the past week, the Irish are probably in a better position after beating Pitt and then following it up with a road win at Georgetown. They can also hang their hat on a January win at West Virginia. The recent success is even more remarkable without Luke Harangody being in the lineup the last couple of weeks. Just like Illinois, Notre Dame does have two bad losses against Rutgers and Loyola Marymount. Wins versus three of the top five teams in the best conference in the nation should cancel out those bad losses.
If the committee is consistent about wanting to see teams who played and beat quality teams in the Field of 65, both Notre Dame and Illinois should be in barring collapse in the final two weeks.
VCU, Marshall, William & Mary, Texas Tech, and Kent State are all ahead of both Illinois and Notre Dame in the RPI, and all have no chance of getting an at-large bid. A few of those above teams are quality teams, but all either lack the quality victories of the Irish or the Illini or were not consistent enough once conference play was in high gear. Ahead of Notre Dame in the RPI are New Mexico State, Weber State, Oakland, Nevada and Tulsa. Weber State, and Oakland are each having tremendous years in mid-major conferences, but can't hope for anything but an automatic NIT bid if they don't take the league tournament title. The other three also need to win the conference tourney, but haven't been their league's best in the regular season.
One of the best things the selection committee has done over the past few years is the creation of the mock selection committee, where they invite media members to emulate the selection process. The motivation when the program started was obviously to show the media the ins and outs of the process and to keep them from quoting tired numbers like Team RPI and overall win total as reasons why a team should be in or out after Selection Sunday.
I have yet to read a single writer's account of the mock selection process where the writer did not say something along the lines of, "You know, a team's RPI just wasn't that important in our process." And I doubt that the NCAA would or even could be subversive about something like that, especially when there's a lot of evidence that an RPI in the 50s or 60s is not a disqualifier. Of course, the paradox remains that your opponents' RPI rankings are how quality wins are judged. So it would be more accurate for ESPN and CBS to put up a team's record against the Top 50 and Top 100 in lieu of a team's RPI.
The 2007 version of Selection Sunday was, to me at least, one of the most surprising in recent memory. Two norms for selection to the tournament were broken that day when Syracuse and Kansas State were left out of the Big Dance with over 20 wins plus 10 wins in a major conference. It shouldn't have been that surprising.
Before the 2006-07 season, the NCAA lifted the rule that a team could only play in two exempt non-conference tournaments (multi-team events) that only counted one game towards the NCAA regular season maximum of 28. The rule was changed such that every team in America could play in an exempt multi-team event if they so choose, so long as they didn't play in the same event two times in a four-year period. As a result, it's now common place to see a team play 30 games or more by the end of their conference tournament. Now 20 wins, while still a solid achievement, doesn't carry the meaning it once did.
The last decade also changed the significance of the amount of conference wins a team piled up by Selection Sunday. As a result of expansion in the ACC and Big East during the last several years, the Pac-10 is the only BCS conference which plays a double round-robin format in conference. So it matters to the committee not how many wins there are overall or in conference, but who you beat in all games. In that same 2007 tournament, the committee picked Arkansas, who went 7-9 in the SEC.
You don't have to be a slave to numbers of decaying importance like overall wins, conference wins, and team RPI. The Basketball State website has replicas of the selection sheets that the committee will look at to make its judgments (subscription required to view more than three in a day, but here is Illinois' sheet. A good, but inauthentic alternative can be found at the team pages on Warren Nolan's site). One caveat with those sheets is that the NCAA has said that "Last 12 Games" is no longer a factor in selection. It only makes sense that a sheet that you would find in the selection room in Indianapolis this year would not have that bottom set of boxes.
Selection Sunday is one of the best days on the yearly sports calendar. The tension, angst, and anticipation that it provides for has to be the best non-game event that any sport has. However, in the build-up to that middle Sunday in March, the focus is on things that ultimately hinder the understanding of the selection itself.
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